Invisalign

This is the latest version of my teeth. It’s not 100% perfect yet but I’m really happy with it! People have commented that one of my fillings is very visible – it’s on my front teeth and you can see the yellow discoloration it made from the back. I never paid much attention to it until my better half told me she noticed it the first time she met me. I felt rather self conscious after that and made it a point to fix it.

I just went to Imperial Dental in Bangsar to re-do the filings. My orthodontist Dr Salima was concerned that I would need a root canal coz of the rot but in the end it just needed another filling. It’s one of the gnarlier procedures to go through coz of the sensitivity of the teeth (drill goes into the root) but I’m glad it’s all done. I never thought the yellow bit would be so visible but it actually shows each time I smile and affects my overall look.

I did 2 fillings for RM 270. This is not covered by Invisalign as it’s a cosmetic procedure that I’m doing on my own and thus paying out of my own pocket. It’s RM 150 for one and RM 120 for the other. I think it’s money well spent as my front teeth are all the same white color now. Teeth is one of the things that I never paid much attention to coz honestly I look pretty decent (above average anyway) but it’s one of the things you can easily fix to make yourself look A LOT better. I’m glad I did it and my Invisalign is going well too!

I wrote about having new aligners made last month and they’ve now arrived! It’s a set of 35 aligners which means it’ll take another 35 x 2 weeks for me to complete my journey to better teeth. That’s just about 1 1/2 years to go, which all things considered, isn’t very long. I have never really taken care of my teeth when I was younger. I knew I had crooked and slightly discolored teeth but I never did think of it as a “big deal”.

I actually kinda liked the way my two teeth are kinda crooked, makes me look like a cute Dracula. Or so I thought. It’s actually quite invisible to the person but I noticed that one of the things that makes an impression when people smile is teeth. You notice if they have good teeth and you DEFINITELY remember if they have bad teeth. I didn’t realize that my teeth was marring my otherwise (relatively) perfect features. Haha.

This is something I’ve only noticed in the past few years, but one time I was watching crappy videos on YouTube, there was chain of comments which went along the lines of “Why didn’t the guy fix his teeth?”. The video was about a group of cannabis seed hunters from Amsterdam and the comments were directed at this Italian guy who was one of the main cultivators with the company that invented the White Widow strain.

I had noticed that his teeth was something horrible and the other viewers were going on about how he was a millionaire now and yet didn’t take enough pride in his appearance to do his teeth and that really resonated with me. I think I have decent features so why would I not take care more of something else that I had full control over and makes a big impression on others? I will, I’ll start taking care of my teeth.

It can be a bit of a hassle to have Invisalign on all the time, but you get used to it. You can still take them out during meals and if anything, they’ve made me cut down on my snacks. It’s too much work to take out my aligners, eat a Mars bar, brush my teeth and put them back on so I go without the candy instead. I’m looking forward to having straighter teeth after a year or so and I’m glad I decided to take this journey with Imperial Dental.

I’m restarting my Invisalign journey due to some minor misalignments from the previous set of aligners. It’s a good thing Invisalign provides complimentary remoulds in the off-chance that your aligners went out of whack for some reason or another. That means I’ll be going in to get my moulds done again – this should take a couple of hours but I’m keen to get started so I can make sure that everything goes well on my end. I’ve gotten quite used to wearing Invisalign but it was uncomfortable wearing the same aligners for over a month.

I had to keep my teeth in line while my new moulds were sent so that’s why I needed to wear the latest aligner (from the old set) until the new ones arrive. Thanks to advances in shipping (as well as in manufacturing) the new aligners should arrive pretty soon. The actual aligners are made in Mexico, or at least that’s what the packaging says, but the Invisalign technology itself is done it San Jose, California.

I’m sure a lot of people are curious to see photos like these. There has to be a reason why these Before and After photos are popular in all aesthetics related field. Here’s mine!

Warning: Some photos might be a little graphic since they show my insides in great detail.

Now, with that slightly clickbait sounding introduction () let me introduce you to some of the photos Imperial Dental Bangsar has been kind enough to share with me. These are taken by a professional photographer (they have one in-house) that takes snaps of you before procedures. I have had photos taken several times during the course of my Invisalign treatment (and once when I had a saliva duct infection).

This is a shot of my front teeth.

Here’s one of the upper jaw…

…and a photo of my lower jaw.

The leftmost/upper pictures are all Before and the rightmost/lower ones are the After shots…or should I say “During”? I’m still in the midst of my Invisalign treatment – in fact, my awesome orthodontist Dr Salima made new Invisalign molds coz one of my lower left back teeth isn’t coming out as fast. There’s still a long journey ahead but you can see the positive changes already. There’s an inward growing teeth which has been removed in the picture above so everything looks nicer.

My teeth are also a lot straighter now, even though it’s barely halfway through my treatment. I also realized I’ve grown A LOT fatter over the past year. T_T

Haha! I’ll post up more of these photos again soon!

BTW, I get a lot of comments asking about the cost of the procedure, and I’m not qualified to answer that since it differs for each individual. Try surfing over to Imperial Dental Bangsar and message them on Facebook for a proper quote if you’re interested. Cheers!

If you said X-Ray Machine you’re right! It’s an X-Ray machine for your teeth. I just went to Imperial Dental Bangsar coz I had a swollen jaw (!!!). This mysteriously manifested yesterday afternoon while I was eating. It turned out to be an infected saliva duct (seems to happen fairly often to people) and I was put on a course of antibiotics before I’m flying off to Japan. I didn’t get my Invisalign stuff done though, I’m supposed to be on a temporary rubber band therapy to see if the obstinate left backmost molar can be pushed in or I’ll have to do it all over again.

Bad news is I’ve been on Invisalign for over a year and I’ll hate for the time to be for naught. Good news is I won’t have to pay for the new Invisalign moulds as Dr Stephanie kindly told me it’ll be waived in this case.

We’ll see how it goes. I’ll update again at the end of the month when I’m due to go in. Cheers!

This is the first place we stopped on the way up to Penang. We, in this case, was a bus-load of 25 people, all related, going on the largest family trip I’ve ever participated in (or seen, for that matter). Restaurant Pun Chun is famous for their wonton noodles – the huge wontons are made with a little bit of pork mince and a HUGE prawn.

Their wonton noodles has been hyped up way in advance by the rather dodgy looking tour guide (provided with the bus, don’t look at me). I’ve actually eaten here before, not here as in Bidor, but at a branch of this particular café. They’ve expanded to Klang Valley and their franchise in Kota Damansara is very close to where I live.

Restaurant Pun Chun is also famous for their duck leg noodles, which is what we usually eat in Kota Damansara. It’s a soup based dish (although the noodles are served separately) but since we went so early in the morning, they didn’t have drumsticks/leg. The only cuts were breast and thigh so I passed on this. The soup is pretty good though, it’s what we call pek tin yok – a combination of 8 different herbs.

We had both the dry and soup version of wonton mee (RM 6.30 per bowl/plate) which comes with four (4) wontons per serving. The dry version has noodles tossed in soy sauce while I thought was nicer. The large prawn inside each wonton is a treat to behold – juicy and succulent, truly delicious when paired with some of their pickled green chillis.

It looks like a bit of a tourist trap with the aisles of chicken biscuit snacks and other popular munchies from Bidor but their wonton noodles are really quite enchanting. I would stop here again next time I drive up this way.

Short Mention:

Oh ya! I totally forgot to bring my Invisalign for this trip. I’ve been behind coz I forgot to bring them back to Sibu too (damn last minute packing) but the good thing is, you can still wear your current ones until you go back to your orthodontist. It’s not ideal but here’s a tip for anyone on Invisalign or planning to get on the treatment and travels a lot like myself – if you forget to pack your aligners, just wear your current one until you get back e.g. I’m on my 9th set of aligners and it’s the last one I have at home.

That means I’ll have to drop by Imperial Dental Bangsar to get my next few aligners. Since I forgot to pack them for this trip to Penang, I can just take a short 4 day break and wear them as soon as I get back home. If it’s been longer than a few days and the current ones won’t fit, go back one set i.e. start wearing your *previous* aligners (8th in my case) for a few days before going back on your current set of aligners. That’s why it’s important to keep your past aligners! :)

I’ve been having problems with my teeth lately…or more specifically, my gums. I’ve been on Invisalign for several months now and I noticed that the back of my jaw hurts whenever I put the aligners on.

I chalked it down to the Invisalign treatment working its magic and ignored the pain each and every time I had to put them back on after I finish my meals.
It makes sense that aligning your teeth would sting (at least a little) right?

However, it started getting worse and the next time I was at Imperial Dental Bangsar, I told my orthodontist about the discomfort. She told me it doesn’t sound normal at all and after showing her where it was tender, she immediately isolated the problem.

It wasn’t the Invisalign treatment that was hurting my gums after all – it was due to the very back of the aligners pressing *into* my gums! It turns out that everyone’s teeth is sized differently and the standard set was a little too large for my molars so it impacted the gums.

I didn’t even realize it was my gums that were sore, I thought it was my teeth!

Thus, the good people at Imperial Dental Bangsar helped me to custom cut my bottom aligners. The back of the bottom right side was taken off quite a bit – scissors were used to make a sideways L cutaway so it won’t touch my gums. I tested it and found out that the ache on my right was gone but my left side was starting to smart.

Heh! It turns out that BOTH sides were in contact with my gums but since the right side was much more painful so I didn’t even realize that the left side was in distress!

It takes a very good orthodontist to be able to isolate and treat conditions like this. I felt comfortable talking to the people there, or I wouldn’t have brought it up. I’ve always thought I had a high tolerance to pain and tend to suffer in silence.

Good thing Dr. Salma and Dr. Stephanie (my orthodontists) diagnosed what was wrong and fixed the bottom aligners on both sides by cutting it to my teeth size and sanding it down so the edges aren’t sharp. They helped me cut and sand the next few aligners too, so I don’t have to do it myself – they all fit properly and painlessly now.

It’s little details like this that gives Imperial Dental Bangsar the good name they have (really, ask anyone who’s been there about their service) and I’m glad they’re the ones taking me through this 2 year journey to a perfect smile. :)

I have gotten my next four (4) Invisalign aligners from Imperial Bangsar Dental! :)

I’ll be heading back to Sibu for a couple of days so I got 2 months worth so I won’t need to go back until July. I’ve been wearing the aligners for more than two months now (going to switch to my 7th set later today) and I’ve gotten used to the routine now…so much so that I actually forgot to take it out a few times!

The worse bit was with my 6th pair of aligners, I drank coffee without taking them out, which stained the aligners a bit, but I used regular toothpaste and a toothbrush to clean them and they’re as good as new. Haha.

I’m actually quite excited about my progress! I know it takes 2 years to get perfect teeth but nothing good comes easy and having a brilliant smile is definitely worth the time.

I’ll be doing regular updates on my progress with Invisalign so you’ll know how it goes. I’m really happy with the results to date – you can see the sides actually straightening from the 3D scans and my better half tells me it’s getting more even by the day (after I forced her to peek into my mouth). :D

I had a moment of panic as I struggled with putting on my custom-made aligners after my orthodontic attachment have been fixed. I imagine having to struggle with slipping them on every day for almost two years but soon the discomfort faded and I found it very easy to take on and off. It’s just like a tongue piercing – the (white and invisible) ligatures makes your teeth feel like there are multiple foreign objects inside and you can feel the Invisalign aligners working in your mouth but the feeling goes away very quickly.

It lasted just a couple of hours for me before I forgot I even had an Invisalign aligner on and ate an orange segment. The fruit actually popped in my mouth before I realized I had it in.

Now that I’ve been wearing them for almost a month, I love my Invisalign aligners. It’s virtually invisible and no one seems to notice that I have them on until I take it out right before I have a meal. There are so many celebrities using Invisalign treatment in movies and real life (like Claire Danes in the latest season of Homeland, I believe) that it has become cool to remove your Invisalign aligners before eating!

That’s part of the appeal too – Invisalign aligners are removable so it’s unlike metal braces, which presents a whole set of problems – there are a lot of foods you can’t eat and it’s time-consuming to keep them clean.

I can take them off whenever I want to eat something so I can eat whatever I want without having to worry about food getting stuck inside.

BTW, just to show how invisible the Invisalign aligners are, I actually still had my aligners on in that photo above – you just don’t notice it! :)

It’s also very comfortable to wear. There’s a slight feeling of tightness when you switch aligners every two weeks, but you won’t even notice it’s there after a while. I have had two incidents to date when I have accidentally started eating without removing my aligners, that’s how comfortable they are!

I have heard stories from users of regular metal braces who experience irritation and inflammation, but the BPA-free plastic that the Invisalign System uses produces none of those symptoms.

I had three (3) of my teeth extracted in between my second and third set of aligners too. This had to be done due to an existing tooth that’s missing and it’s purely for cosmetic purposes. My experience with the orthodontists at Imperial Dental Specialist Center in Jalan Telawi, Bangsar is top notch – one of the teeth was a bit tricky to remove since it’s almost at a 90 degree angle so it required surgery but they did it without any pain at all!

It just cost me RM 460 for the 3 extractions too; it’s actually RM 80 per tooth but the bottom one had complications and required surgery so it was RM 300. I thought the prices were very reasonable too! It’s great service with awesome bedside manner from a solid team of orthodontists.

The Invisalign treatment is also very convenient! My orthodontist is at a very busy location in Bangsar and I’m going home for the Lunar New Year so I can just get an extra set or two to bring back to my hometown of Sibu so I can just switch to the new set of aligners every two weeks without having to go back to my orthodontist.

Each Invisalign treatment is customized for you and only you! There’s complex 3D software which mapped my entire oral cavity with X-Rays and photos and I could see my teeth and what’s needed to correct my dental issues. The software is really quite remarkable – there’s two sets of treatments I can go for – one which requires the extraction of three of my teeth and one that didn’t but lasts longer.

I opted for the extraction and just clicked and typed in my name as an electronic signature and the order was sent off to Align Technology in the United States!

My extraction is due to a missing tooth I had in my lower left jaw and it’s purely for cosmetic purposes. My orthodontist told me that removing three other teeth will make my jaw look smaller and more streamlined and I signed up! I didn’t even know you could do cosmetic improvement like that!

I also can look forward to perfectly straight teeth after my 41 custom-made aligners are finished. I actually have rather crooked teeth that I’ve never fixed but I have seen that straightening teeth actually make people look more attractive! I notice myself noticing that and that was a huge catalyst for me to decide to go for Invisalign treatment.

It’s just natural for people to be attracted to straight teeth and symmetry in faces. Even babies are naturally attracted to facial symmetry and attractiveness! This has been well-studied so Google it if you don’t believe me. Babies already love me, mothers are constantly amazed when their babies stare at me and smile, I just want them to still look at me when I smile back.

You can have the chance to get a perfect smile too! Check out Nuffnang Malaysia Official Blog for more information, sign-up to participate, and you will stand a chance to win a full treatment sponsored by the makers of the Invisalign System! Read more to understand about how Invisalign treatment works and how it can change your life at Invisalign SEA and check out the official Invisalign Malaysia Facebook page to interact.

Disclaimer: I have received complimentary Invisalign treatment and/or compensation from Align Technology, Inc. in exchange for voluntarily promoting and sharing my Invisalign experience. The experiences shared and views expressed are my own.